istoryworld
Events relating to literature
Samuel Clemens, writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain, has immediate success with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier
Leo Tolstoy publishes the first volume of his epic novel War and Peace, following the lives of several aristocratic families during the Napoleonic wars
Walt Whitman laments the assassinated President Lincoln in his poem 'O Captain! My Captain!', published in Sequel to Drum-Taps
Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads
Dostoevsky publishes Crime and Punishment, a novel narrated by Raskolnikov, a St Petersburg student and murderer
French author Paul Verlaine wins a reputation with his first published collection, Poémes saturniens ('Saturnine Poems')
The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg
The first collection of 'Negro Spirituals' is published in book form in the US as Slave Songs of the United States
US author Louisa May Alcott begins serial publication of her book for children, Little Women (in book form 1869)
Dostoevsky publishes The Idiot, a novel about the simple-minded and truthful Prince Myshkin
English author Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society
16-year-old Arthur Rimbaud sends some of his poems to Paul Verlaine, already an established poet
Bret Harte's comic ballad Plain Language from Truthful James acquires a popular alternative title, The Heathen Chinee
French author Émile Zola publishes The Fortune of the Rougons, the first in a 20-novel series that he calls Les Rougon-Macquart
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
Pragmatism emerges as a philosophical approach in meetings of the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Gilded Age, by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain, provides the familiar name for life in the US towards the end of the nineteenth century
English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt has its premiere in Oslo, with incidental music by Edvard Grieg
Leo Tolstoy publishes the first volume of his novel Anna Karenina, in which the heroine develops a fatal love for Count Vronsky
After spending much time in Europe in recent years, Henry James moves there permanently and settles first in Paris
Henry James's early novel Roderick Hudson is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in 1876
William Gladstone's pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors, protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month
Henry James moves to London, which remains his home for the next 22 years
